The effect of contextual aspects on importance ratings of usability dimensions in system evaluation

Contextual aspects of interaction should be considered during system development and evaluation. This study investigates the importance of contextual aspects for five usability dimensions in system development and evaluation: Relevance, Efficiency, Learnability, Error Management, and Attitudes. Two different contextual aspects of use were investigated during system evaluation testing, where two groups of experienced fighter pilots performed predefined tasks in a new system for civil navigation, and a new system for target designation. The results from the system evaluation testing indicate that contextual aspects have an effect on user importance ratings across all dimensions and they were rated as more important in the context of target designation. Thus, the context has settling importance when assessing the relevance of usability measures. This implies that the framework contributes to systems development and evaluation in simulated scenario-based environments and further point to the importance of staying sensitive to the design of scenarios when conducting usability evaluations in simulated environments.